March 31, 2013

Argentina's disappeared: never forgotten

The terrible events of Argentina's dirty war remain close to everyday life. Criminal proceedings continue to this day. Mothers continue to seek the truth about what happened to their children. The stolen children are being sought, and in some cases, found.

Pagina|12, a daily newspaper, runs memorial adverts that regularly appear in its pages. Placed by friends and family on the day their son or daughter, or uncle, or mother... disappeared, they are memorials and warnings both; that this will not be forgotten, justice will prevail.

Young men and women, often students, or workers, or teachers, or ...

Sometimes grandmothers, whose only crime might have been to rent a room to someone under suspicion.

The ads, usually in the lower left hand corner of an inside page, remind us, almost everyday.

In this advert, the young couple are Silvina and Daniel, detained in Cordoba in 1976. Silvana was six and one half months pregnant at the time of the arrest. In all likelihood, she was kept alive until giving birth when her child was then adopted, and she was dumped from a plane into the ocean.